


we are young supernovas

by anatomied



Series: send our love to its reward down in hell [3]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Fake AH Crew, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2016-12-08
Packaged: 2018-09-07 05:59:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8785867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anatomied/pseuds/anatomied
Summary: Video games and alcohol can only get a crew so far in a dry spell. Ryan and Ray don’t even drink, after all. But they find things to do anyway. Stupid, stupid things.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Finals stress is totally helping me write these fast. Same canon as my previous Raywood fic, but just earlier in the timeline. This went places I did not expect it to go, to be honest, and intersects with even more of my weird interests than the first one (violence and dumb jokes, now featuring motorcycles and theater, plus a single real conversation about actual feelings).

Two weeks after their most recent successful heist, Michael declares to the rest of the crew, “This is actually worse than not getting fucking laid.” They’re all gathered around the island in the kitchen, elbowing for room towards the late night snacks Ryan and Jack brought home from the convenience store a block over. They even paid with cash - ill-gotten cash, sure, but still valid U.S. currency - instead of letting their guns do the talking for them. It’s the closest Los Santos will probably ever see to them being _upstanding citizens_. God forbid.

The crew's letting the heat die down right now. Rob two banks in one heist, you see, and the police get a little upset with you - for real, this time.

Ray makes a noise of assent around a mouthful of nachos. Ryan pops open a can of diet Coke as Michael pivots to give Ray a withering look.

“I’m just saying,” Ray says after swallowing. “If anyone here knows about awesome dry spells, it’s me. Mine’s fucking legendary.”

“Guinness World Record,” Ryan intones as he lifts the can of soda a few inches in a kind of mock toast. Ray stops reaching for the nachos again long enough to raise his middle finger right in Ryan’s direction. Jack chuckles and reaches for one of the beers sitting on the table, condensation dripping onto the granite countertop.

Geoff bursts out of digging around in the cabinet. “Look at what _I_ found, dickheads,” he proclaims.

He holds up two bottles of whiskey, legs apart in some kind of victory stance. His hair’s sticking up in about six different directions since he just got out of bed - what, two hours ago? The only one who woke up any later was Ray, and the only reason Ray even got up today was because Michael grabbed Gavin from behind and picked him up off the ground right outside of Ray’s door.

Ryan had been in his own room, and through the closed door he had heard Gavin’s shriek. Michael bellowed something like _I’m winning the Gavin Noise Enabler award this year, bitch_ -

Needless to say, Ray had not been happy. The nachos were helping, though.

As much as Ryan pretended he picked them up for everyone, even Jack called him out for it. “You’re buying shitty convenience store nachos for Ray,” Jack told him, and Ryan shrugged helplessly. “He’s going to get food poisoning one day and it’s going to be your fault.”

“Eh.” Ryan picked up a case of diet Coke. “His fault for eating it.”

Jack snorted and began carrying an armful of snacks and drinks towards the register.

Everyone was happy enough. Enough was the key word there. Because as much as Ryan hated to admit it, Michael was sort of right. Not doing anything, being cooped up in the penthouse, was wearing on everyone. They had played Smash for three nights in a row. Ray kept winning. Gavin had even covered Ray’s eyes at one point, and Ray had _still_ won. Ryan called bullshit.

So instead, Ray had beat his ass at Street Fighter to prove a point. While blindfolded.

Tonight was Smash again. Drunk Smash, which was a special permutation of Smash where Gavin started sliding off the couch halfway through and kept sliding until he was laying on the floor. He kept asking Ryan those stupid questions: _what if, what if I gave you a hundred million dollars, okay, Ryan, but every time you want to get off you have to go on a loudspeaker - no, no, imagine a loudspeaker that like, follows you, and announce it to everyone, including what you’re getting off to, in detail?_

“Sure,” Ryan said lazily. “Why not. Hand me my hundred million right now.”

In exasperation, Geoff tossed his controller at Gavin but missed, and everyone watched as the controller bounced off the coffee table and nearly hit Michael in the face.

Ray won again while everyone else was screaming at Geoff. Geoff, to his credit, was laughing hard enough that his shoulders were shaking.

“That’s it,” Gavin declares, slamming his controller down this time. “Everyone sober needs to - get the hell out, cheating through your - your sodding _not-drunkness_.”

Ryan says, “That’s not a word.”

“ _Ryan_ ,” Gavin wails.

The crew immediately launches into imitating Gavin’s cry, laying on the bad British accents as thick as they can.

“That’s not what I sound like,” Gavin insists, which of course only makes everyone else even louder.

Ray rolls his eyes and tosses his controller into the corner of the couch. “Fuck this,” he says, standing up and stretching. “C’mon, Ryan. Let’s go - make out or something, I don’t know, who gives a fuck.”

“Just grab his dick, dude,” Michael recommends sagely.

Ray gives him a double thumbs-up.

Ryan hands his controller off to Jack. Jack holds it upside down for a few moments before realizing what he’s doing and turning it the right way around. No reason to say no to Ray’s request. There’s not exactly much here for him right now. Ray makes a beeline for the balcony, and Ryan keeps himself a few steps behind.

Los Santos is cold tonight. Sea winds leave a certain chill everywhere for miles.

They stand there silently for a moment. Ray leans over the balcony and peers down towards the streets below. Their breath is turning to frost in the air.

“Got a question,” Ray says, pushing his glasses up a half a centimeter on his nose.

Ryan smiles slightly. “Lucky for you, I’ve got answers. Is it about making out?” Then he realizes: Ray actually looks serious for once. He throws a glance back down towards the street. Ryan follows his gaze. There are cars moving down on the street, traffic as bad as it always is around six at night.

“Nah. You wish.” Ray taps his fingers on the railing for a moment. “I don’t know, man - you ever forget they’re people?” He’s looking down towards the street as he says it.

He realizes: Ray’s talking about what they do - and specifically them, out of everyone else in the crew. About killing. Because no one else would get it.

Ray sits on top of a building with a hot pink rifle and shatters police officers’ skulls all up and down the street for hours on heist nights. All he has to do is lower the rifle, move his eye away from the scope, and they’re all dots, too tiny for him to see. And Ryan - well, Ryan’s the opposite. He loves the personal methods. He loves words like _evisceration_ , and _dismemberment_ , and the way someone’s eyes roll back in their skull with shock when the gunshot blows some part of them away.

And yet: Ray, with sniper’s intuition, knows.

The problem is simple. Ryan, despite being the only person in the whole crew to attend any college under a different name and a different life, is never very good at this kind of thing. It’s not comfort Ray’s looking for, precisely. Not even confirmation.

So there’s only one path here. It’s called honesty.

Ryan turns his back to the street and leans against the railing, looking over at Ray. “Sometimes,” he admits. “Turn everyone inside and out and they’d look the same, I guess.”

“Dude,” Ray says. Humor is trying its hardest to wage a losing battle in his tone. “That is really fucked up.” A beat. “You saying you’ve turned someone inside out to check?”

“Not yet. But if you don’t believe me, I can check it out for you."

“Sweet.”

Neither of them speak for a few long moments. It’s one of the other things Ryan likes about Ray. They can coexist in silence for hours.

Ryan rolls his neck. Something cracks softly. “Look,” he begins again, “I know you’re not asking me out of guilt or anything like that. But I will admit it’s very easy to look at people down there, on the street, living their normal lives in the nine-to-five grind, and just wonder at how fucking bored they must be. How small their existence is. And that when we’re walking around down there, we probably look the same way to anyone up where we were. That’s not wrong, Ray. It’s just the price we pay for perspective.”

Los Santos glitters below them. Noise pollution travels upwards from the city - cars honking, tires running over bumps in the road. The sound of people, plain and simple. From here, they can see everything - all the places they’ve cleaned out, all the safehouses, all the spots where they’ve dumped old compromised vehicles and watched them burn into charred husks. Ryan almost imagines he could reach out and obliterate them with a press of his thumb.

“I don’t know.” Ray rubs his eyes. “I think being stuck in here is fucking me up. Not cabin fever or shit like that. Not even - Gavin being Gavin. I wish it was. Then I’d just kick his ass in Smash a few more times and I’d be fine.”

“Hey,” Ryan points out, “we’re junkies, right? Of the worst order.”

“The _worst order_ ,” Ray repeats. “You are so fucking overdramatic. As if the skull mask didn’t do enough already.”

“What can I say?” Ryan leans back a few inches, his hands gripping the railing behind him. “I did take theater for a few years in college.”

Ray stares at him for a moment. His jaw works up and down silently. And then Ray _snorts_ , which is a rare and elusive noise known only to Ryan himself and possibly Michael, when Michael hits the right notes. Ryan smirks despite himself, letting a little smugness leak through now that the tensions seems to have evaporated.

“Who’d you play? Hamlet?”

Ryan pauses despite himself. “You know Shakespeare?”

Ray blinks slowly. “Is that Shakespeare?” It’s hard to tell if he’s joking.

Ryan groans and squeezes his eyes shut.

“Dude,” Ray says incredulously, leaning a little closer, “you’re such a fucking _nerd_. All I knew was that Hamlet did the skull thing. So I was like, maybe I can prove to Ryan the theater guy that I’m cultured or whatever.”

“Ray, you are the least cultured person I’ve ever met.”

“Thanks, man. I try.” He gives Ryan a feather-light pat on the shoulder, the most awkward thing that’s ever happened between them.

Ryan starts laughing despite himself - one of those laughs where he leans forward a little and wheezes towards the end. Ray puts on his best concerned face. “Don’t die,” he says, very seriously. “We were just starting to have a serious emotional connection and shit.” Which causes Ryan to cough a little more and wheeze out a few very fucking undignified giggles.

Ryan gets his breath back and straightens. For a single precious second, he catches the biggest God damned shit-eating grin he’s ever seen on Ray’s face. It exists. And then it’s gone.

Sure enough, Ray takes a step or two towards the balcony door. Ryan reaches out just fast enough and actually places a hand on Ray’s shoulder like a real human being. “Tonight,” he says evenly, “we can smuggle ourselves out of here when everyone’s passed out and do something stupid.”

Ray turns to face him neatly. “On an Akuma.”

“On an Akuma,” Ryan agrees.

“How stupid are we talking here?” Jesus, Ray’s bartering with him over crime.

“We’re already on an Akuma in the first place,” Ryan says. An expectant pause. “I bring pipe bombs.”

Ray sucks in air through his teeth. “Okay. You bring pipe bombs. Let’s say we figure out if either of us can shoot pipe bombs out of the air while on a fucking Akuma.”

“Driver’s not the one shooting, correct?” Ryan confirms.

“Come on,” Ray says with a flash of white teeth. He throws Ryan’s words right back at him. “We’re already on an Akuma in the first place.”

Ryan laughs again - a lower, darker laugh this time. “Geoff’s going to kill us.”

“Fucking pipe bombs might beat him to it. If we’re unlucky.”

“We're not unlucky. We're too good.” Ryan takes a few steps past Ray and opens the balcony door for him, like a true gentleman. “Let’s entertain the damn circus until they fall asleep, then.”

Turns out that for all of Ryan’s theater background, Ray’s the better entertainer. It’s hard to beat walking in and going _I grabbed Ryan’s dick, you guys_ with the somber tone of a man at a loved one’s funeral, though. Geoff collapses into shaking laughter. Jack puts his face in his hands. Michael tries to punch the air in victory and clocks Gavin in the lower jaw instead, knocking Gavin back from where the lanky guy was sort of dangling over the back of the couch.

Typical crew chaos reigns for a good thirty minutes.

By the time it hits a little past eight, the rest of the crew is slumped in various positions on the floor or couch. Gavin is snoring away and Geoff’s just face down in the carpet. Definitely not dead, though, because words that sound like _cocksucker_ and _stupid son of a bitch_ are vaguely floating up from the ground.

“Ready?” Ryan says softly in the kitchen, his mask dangling loosely from his hand. Ray tosses back a handful of chips and nods.

He knew Ray was ready. But it’s still polite to ask.

On the way out the door, Ray gives him a wicked grin. Ryan wants to carve that moment inside of himself for the rest of his life. “Got twenty bucks for you if you do something embarrassing before we do the Akuma bet. Swear to God I won’t get a video or anything. This is just for me.”

Ryan almost says yes immediately, but he flashes back to the kinds of bets Ray has been exposed to through Gavin. “Depends on how embarrassing it is.”

“Twenty bucks if you stand out in the parking garage and do your best theater monologue super loudly and dramatically. No half-assing it, either.”

Ryan raises an eyebrow. “How would you know I was half-assing it?”

Ray leans very, very close. “I would know. Forty if you do it on a street corner and I find a box for people to throw cash in.”

“This is Los Santos,” Ryan reminds him. “No one cares.”

“Cool,” Ray says, unconcerned. “Make them care. Or be a huge fucking coward, I guess.”

Angrily Ryan spits out, “God damn it.” He runs a hand through his hair. Ray’s eyes snap to the movement before meeting Ryan’s gaze again. “Show me the fucking money.”

Ray fishes out two twenties from his wallet and holds them up between his thumb and forefinger.

Ryan meets his eyes. “One monologue.”

“Just one.”

“No videos.”

“Your secret is one hundred percent certified safe with me,” Ray says, and dashes two fingers across his heart like anything’s ever been safe with them for a single God damned minute of their lives.

Hey, Ryan does the monologue anyway, and earns an extra ten bucks from some old couple that know Shakespeare in the slightest - a veritable fortune on city streets - which he splits with Ray as they wander a few blocks waiting for that one inevitable asshole on an Akuma. It wasn’t a choice of monologue so much as he only remembered Macbeth, all _is this a dagger which I see before me_. If nothing else, it fit who they were.

It is their bloody business, after all.

\---

The next morning, Geoff stands up in the middle of the living room and points at Ray and Ryan in the kitchen. “What the hell is that?” he demands, moving his finger to aim towards the television.

“Well, shit,” Ray says, elbowing Ryan hard in the ribs. “Look, it’s us. Looking hot on that Akuma.”

“I think the bike might be making us look a lot better than we actually did,” Ryan says, drumming his fingers on the kitchen countertop as Ray begins slicing his bagel in half. "Or is it making us look worse?"

"What the fuck, Ryan, an Akuma can't make anything look worse. It's an  _Akuma_. I could dump half of one of those in a sewer and rich assholes would be lining up to buy that shit."

"Akumafront property, then. Like beachfront, but in a city."

“You dumb fucks,” Geoff interjects incredulously.

“No one got hurt,” Ray begins, right as _fifteen injured in bombings_ scrolls across the bottom of the screen. “No one important got hurt,” he amends. In a moment Ryan remembers their conversation on the balcony. It’s all about perspective. People’s importance falls under that umbrella.

Geoff growls something that sounds like _no one can follow basic directions in this fucking crew_ and storms back over to scavenge through the barren remains of the liquor cabinet.

And yeah, sure, the crew’s going to talk shit. R&R connection, connecting a little too hard, with Ray pressed up close against Ryan on the back of that Akuma as he yanks another pipe bomb out of the bag. The news footage is beautiful, as always. Red bike, spotlights glittering, sirens blaring. He wouldn’t have it filmed any other way.

There’s one thing Ryan will keep to himself. There was a look he’s never seen before on Ray’s face during the whole Macbeth bet, something alternatively bright and hungry, as though he was looking at something in Ryan he’d never seen before. And he wanted that something very badly. Ryan was almost sorry that the monologue was relatively short, because he really, really wanted to see that look on Ray’s face every single day until one of them died.

“Cream cheese?” Ray asks. Ryan nods.

As Ray moves everything closer to him, it all slots into place, as easy as anything, and Ryan picks up the butter knife.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from High Hawk Season by the Mountain Goats (I have a thing, if you can't tell).


End file.
